Hello, a question for experts. Is it useful to get buoyancy with floating kit? Or superfluous with action cam.

Let me know, thanks

Giacomo

1 minute ago, Gmsalterego said:

superfluous with action cam.

You have the answer

For action cam itself, no but

Some people assumes a floating camera is easier to find when lost at sea or during a dive. It depends on many things but personally I think things lost, sitting on the bottom on a dive site are easier to find than a floating and drifting dot at the surface.

If you have big lights, arms, a tray and your action cam, it can weight a lot and be painful on wrists on the long run.

I find my video way more stabilized now, that I have more structure around the GoPro, but I added floaters also to compensate the weight of the torches and wet lenses.

Here is a photo:

@Elvandar : have you estimated your rig's weight above and underwater?

My rig's weight is 3 kg while 1,36 kg underwater, fresh water.

It's a bit difficult to manage arms and diving torches. I was thinking about floating kit for a couple of arms. I'm not still sure to use two couple of arms...

Ciao, Giacomo

On 10/3/2025 at 12:29 PM, eocean-eu said:

For action cam itself, no but

Some people assumes a floating camera is easier to find when lost at sea or during a dive. It depends on many things but personally I think things lost, sitting on the bottom on a dive site are easier to find than a floating and drifting dot at the surface.

If you have big lights, arms, a tray and your action cam, it can weight a lot and be painful on wrists on the long run.

My wife have a gopro with lights It's negativ... I build flots in 3D printing for the lights... result it's light floating...

She lost the camera i na near vertical wall...

the guide and she started seraching... I goes up... See nothing.. The boat cam I ask to show if....
YES some m away... the boat take the gear and I go down to inform that all is ok...


My camera is also floating it is for me a MUST.

I found a picture.

I only see that after the dive... during the dive I was making photo look at position etc... not the small thing in the background

It was the first day of a 3 week trip in Indonesia.... Also the 600st dive of me wife. We was lucky



Why it happend she gave the gopro to the guide ... he give her back and she didn't clips the gopro to her BCD... I toke picture and she didn't remember she didn't clip it... that's it.

It was in the wall from Bunaken...

The other consideration with video is stability, I guess the GoPro has decent stabilisation, but giving it less to do is probably a good thing. So this means getting the trim right as well, having the rig trying to twist up is a problem and it far easier to keep steady if you don't have to resist that torque. I dived one time with a photo rig that was positive and the dome kept wanting to twist upwards, quite difficult to use. Similarly my wide angle rig uses lots of buoyancy in the arms and it's rather difficult to twist it upwards even though the rig itself was near neutral overall.

My rig is always clipped off and close to neutral so if I let it go it sinks quite slowly. I think a 1.36 kg rig could definitely benefit from some buoyancy. If 1.36kg is correct two of the INON 650gram mega float arms would be about perfect.

Yes a very important point this the stability... No twist

4 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

My rig is always clipped off and close to neutral so if I let it go it sinks quite slowly.

Clipped ON
Close to neutral Yes
Go up quite slowly but go UP Surface is allways "near" and you ca follow... bottom can be deep very deep where you can't go

I usually use my action camera on the top of my mirrorless housing, but time to time I use action camera alone. As soon as you add lights it's recommended to use a tray and floating arms. It makes the handling and moving the camera without small handshakes, which results better footage. Here, you can see my maxed out GoPro set up.

Thank you everybody.

I was looking for something not too expensive, such as float foam for arms.

In your opinion which lenght I should choose for arms? 2 or 4 arms? 12 or 18 or 24 cm or wich combination of them?

Thanks. Giacomo

P.s. here is a picture of my rig. 18 cm arms and a couple of chinese lights.

Edited October 5Oct 5 by Gmsalterego

2 hours ago, Gmsalterego said:

Thank you everybody.

I was looking for something not too expensive, such as float foam for arms.

In your opinion which lenght I should choose for arms? 2 or 4 arms? 12 or 18 or 24 cm or wich combination of them?

Thanks. Giacomo

P.s. here is a picture of my rig. 18 cm arms and a couple of chinese lights.

You would need 7 1/2 Stix jumbo floats at 180 gr each, so if your arms are short you might need 2 each side to fit them. 4 STIX jumbo floats are 57 Euro at one store in Europe I saw while the INON mega float is 70 Euro, You might be up for another arm with STIX potentially but the INON float arm is an arm so you won't need another one, so very little difference in cost.

@Chris Ross I found 1 piece of INON mega float 70 €, 4 pieces STIX jumbo float at 50 €. I found 4 pieces FLEX-ARM float at 30 €. By the way I wonder which is the best setti g in arms I.e. number, lenght and so on.

To solve my doubts I wrote the post.

On 10/4/2025 at 7:49 PM, CaolIla said:

I found a picture.

I only see that after the dive... during the dive I was making photo look at position etc... not the small thing in the background

It was the first day of a 3 week trip in Indonesia.... Also the 600st dive of me wife. We was lucky



Why it happend she gave the gopro to the guide ... he give her back and she didn't clips the gopro to her BCD... I toke picture and she didn't remember she didn't clip it... that's it.

It was in the wall from Bunaken...

I was recently in a similar situation except I saw a TG6 slowly ascending and drifting in the current in front of me. It still took 2 mins for the owner to realize he lost his tg camera. What if I haven't happened to be nearby... The boat was moored and nobody watching the surface. It would have been probably lost for good.

From what I read and saw in the field, one common point with many lost camera seems to be the weird habit of people simply clipping their rig to their BC. Many people think it's a safe practice and this is also what some photo/course teach. At some point, for various conscious or inconscous) reasons, a diver may release his/her hands off the camera thinking the camera is safe and at that moment, the underwater magic can happen, (probably the same one that apparently unties knots). While I have the capability to clip things in case of emergency ascent, I never clip my gear so I have to keep my hands on it all the time and I haven't lost anything from small action cams to big equipment.

10 hours ago, Gmsalterego said:

I found 1 piece of INON mega float 70 €, 4 pieces STIX jumbo float at 50 €. I found 4 pieces FLEX-ARM float at 30 €. By the way I wonder which is the best setti g in arms I.e. number, lenght and so on.

To solve my doubts I wrote the post.

120g and 175g stix-like foam floats are now sold real cheap on Aliexpress, and they're fine for rec depths.

search for: 4Pcs Underwater Camera Buoyancy Float Kits Aquatic Light Arm Diving Tray Float Kit for Seafrogs/nitescuba/Starbea Floating

Otherwise 10bar as lots of interesting foam float options, their catalog can be downloaded here:

https://www.10bar.com/wp/

with a bit of DIY you can also make the light itself neutral - this an MW4300 light (-250g in water) with an adapted 10-bar float - not the prettiest but does the job:



cheers

b

Edited October 6Oct 6 by bghazzal

8 hours ago, eocean-eu said:

At some point, for various conscious or inconscous) reasons, a diver may release his/her hands off the camera thinking the camera is safe and at that moment, the underwater magic can happen, (probably the same one that apparently unties knots). While I have the capability to clip things in case of emergency ascent, I never clip my gear so I have to keep my hands on it all the time and I haven't lost anything from small action cams to big equipment.

My camera is allways cliped at my BCD...and I have allways the hand on it... They are my rules

3 hours ago, bghazzal said:

with a bit of DIY you can also make the light itself neutral - this an MW4300 light (-250g in water) with an adapted 10-bar float - not the prettiest but does the job:

Not bad

I make in 3D Printing 2 Float for my wifes lights.same result but only a little bit nicer (with pink color ;) )

Upgraded